The World Bank Group's newly released Business Ready report highlights a disparity between regulatory frameworks and public services across 50 economies. While many nations have established regulations to enhance the business environment, they fall short in delivering the necessary public services to ensure tangible progress. The report evaluates each economy with 1,200 indicators, providing insights into areas requiring improvement and encouraging reforms.
This inaugural report finds that nearly all assessed economies perform better in their regulatory framework than in offering public services that facilitate compliance for businesses. This gap prevents businesses, workers, and society from fully benefiting from a robust business climate. On average, economies scored 65.5 out of 100 for regulatory quality but only 49.7 for public services.
"With economic growth being slowed by demography, debt, and discord, progress will come only through the ingenuity of private enterprise," said Indermit Gill, Chief Economist at the World Bank Group. "That depends on conducive conditions—an investment climate that facilitates the economic miracles that entrepreneurs make when they are given half a chance."
Business Ready succeeds the Doing Business project and takes a balanced approach toward evaluating business climates globally. It assesses not just regulatory burdens but also the quality of regulations and necessary public services like tax payment facilities or credit support databases.
The findings reveal significant variations among the evaluated economies regarding practical business conditions. For instance, domestic firm registration can take anywhere from three to 80 days, while foreign firms might wait up to 106 days. Electrical outages average four per month but can reach as high as 22 in some regions.
Norman Loayza, Director of the World Bank’s Indicators Group leading this project noted: "Richer economies do tend to be more business-ready, but economies need not be rich to have a good business environment." He highlighted examples like Rwanda and Viet Nam performing well despite lower income levels.
Transparency is emphasized in Business Ready's methodology with all data and calculations made publicly available on its website ensuring replicability of results using straightforward toolkits.